Author Questions What It Is Ads Are Selling

Advertising consultant Carol Moog describes the intrusion of advertising on the public consciousness as she might an unwelcome house guest.

Advertising didn't take up much space at first, she says, but in recent years it has begun draping its Sheer Energy pantyhose over the shower stall, extinguishing Marlboros in the potted plants and rooting through the fridge for another Bud Light.

''I think we're giving cultural permission for it to invade further and further,'' said Moog, a clinical psychologist and author of a new book about advertising and identity, Are They Selling Her Lips?

''Our perception of personal space is shrinking. Ads come over the fax machine. They're on the back of our toilet stalls. Commercials in movie theaters. Commercials on rented videotapes.''

Moog's book ($18.95, William Morrow and Company Inc.) explores how and why dozens of well-known ad campaigns were developed and presented.

What sets the book apart from the more typical advertising-is-rotting-your-mind book is Moog's clinical experience with people who drive Jeeps, drink Evian and otherwise rely on product images to build personal identities.

Moog explained the book's unusual title in the introduction. Several years ago she was watching television with her daughter, Julie, who was 5. Julie pointed to the big, red, pouting mouth on the screen that was inviting her to ''taste the freshness'' and asked: ''Are they selling her lips?''

''It dawned on me that advertisers sell toothpaste to adults. But to children - the child in all of us - they sell how to look, how to act, how to be.''

''I hear it all the time from my (counseling) clients,'' the author said. ''There's a lot of insecurity, and that's fertile ground for advertising to work its message. It says, 'We'll take you out of your loneliness and desolation and make you sexy and happy.' ''

Happiness hinges on buying the product, she said, a promise that resolves nothing for the individual.

''I often ask them what they would do if they had three wishes,'' Moog said. ''The No. 1 answer with kids is, 'I'd want a million dollars so I can buy all the toys in the world.' Adults are the same way. There's a serious soul deficit we're trying to fill with products, and it's pretty sad, really. Kids buy and sell friendships based on who has the best Nintendo games or the best shoes.

''Is this all the fault of advertising? No, but advertising reinforces the loneliness and alienation we feel and trivializes values.''

Moog noted a trend toward what she called ''fear advertising,'' which plays on the anxieties of consumers. Babies are used to sell Michelins ''because so much is riding on your tires,'' and a BMW can help you ''emerge unscathed from a hostile world.''

Because of increased fear advertising, Moog said ''heavy viewers of TV see the world as a more hostile place than others.'' That skewed world view in turn leads to increased social anxiety and can be used to justify aggression. ''The more frightened you get, the more you blow out your intellectual circuits.''

Citing ongoing research at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, Moog said people who watch television more than four hours a day ''tend to see our society the way television tells them it is, which is often strikingly different from the real world.''

She said: ''I think advertisers need to acknowledge their responsibility for helping shape this society. Advertising is not a mirror. It's a magnification.

''They intensify the color. They intensify the pacing. It's a huge magnification of all our anxiety and guilt, and it's certainly not passive.''